During P1Harmony‘s first six years together, there was a stretch when members couldn’t articulate why they were working so hard.
“What I felt was hardest in this process was when I couldn’t find a reason for running,” Intak tells Billboard during a sit-down in their downtown Los Angeles hotel hours before they fly home to Seoul. “There were times the company just had us run without a clear purpose or a point to reach and I think I got a little worn out the moment I realized that. ‘What is our purpose in this moment? What are we running this hard for? Is it even true that running like this will get us there?’ Every time I had moments like that, I’d suddenly feel drained and it was hard. But even if our steps were really small, we always climbed little by little.”
Six years into their career, the six-piece of Intak, Keeho, Theo, Jiung, Soul and Jongseob has a much clearer view of where all that running is taking them. The K-pop act’s newest EP BLOW UP arrived Friday (Nov. 6), and its title doubles as a mantra for where the group stands today. After years of steady gains on the charts, in album sales, in concert audiences and in hard-won lessons inside the boy band, they’re ready to break through in a bigger way.
P1Harmony’s performance at 82WORLD: LA, their first headlining slot at a U.S. festival the previous weekend, felt like proof. “The last time we did an outdoor thing was the first time we came to L.A.,” leader Keeho recollects. “It’s been like almost four to five years and that’s a really big, full-circle moment.”
Numbers show how far that gratitude goes, with Intak saying he can track the group’s progress in chart positions. “Before, our goal was just to get onto Billboard,” he says. “Just the other day we were at No. 60, then we’re getting into the top 20 and now the top 5. Because we achieved these things one by one, I feel reassured now and I think it’s good that we can show our fans we’re artists who can do at least this much.”
P1H’s six albums’ worth of Billboard 200 history — all EPs — show just that: After first entering the chart at No. 51 with HARMONY : ALL IN during the summer of 2023, P1Harmony earned their first top 40 album with 2024’s Killin’ It (No. 39 peak), followed by SAD SONG (No. 16 in 2024), DUH! (No. 23 in 2025) and their debut English-language EP, EX (No. 9, their first Top 10 in fall 2025). Earlier this year, UNIQUE debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, the group’s best showing yet, earning 58,000 equivalent album units in its first week.
While they’re aiming even higher with BLOW UP, bigger shifts have been happening behind the scenes.
“Because K-pop seems very exotic, people think it’s like, ‘Whoa, these guys have no control over their careers and whatnot,’” Toronto native Keeho says of outside perceptions. “That is the case for some people, I will not lie, but I feel like even labels out here [in the U.S.] are really controlling with the creatives you work with, the people you’re allowed to talk to, the visuals and stuff like that — they won’t listen to you unless you make it big. It’s the same thing with us.”
What changed the conversation with P1Harmony’s Korean label and agency, FNC Entertainment, was evidence, perhaps best seen when the Keeho-composed album track “Pretty Boy” off DUH! became an unexpected breakout streaming hit, earning 12 million more listens on Spotify than the album’s title track single despite no promotion tied to it.
“The company sees successes like ‘Pretty Boy’ and the fans liking the music that the members are making, taking direction in, [creating] choreo for, the stage direction that Theo takes,” explains Keeho. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, listen to us’ without any evidence; it’s the company saying, ‘Hey, actually the members are taking directions in their own fields and the fans are loving it — maybe we should listen to them more.’ I think it’s that buildup that now, finally, in [year six], they’re like, ‘Hey, maybe y’all actually know what you guys are talking about.’”
For UNIQUE this year, the group thought ahead about what other songs might connect with audiences.
“We really communicated to the company that something might hit differently, so let’s prepare,” Keeho continues, sharing that the sextet landed on using their budget to make visuals for “L.O.Y.L.” (because “artistically, that’s something we’ve never done”) and “ICE (VVS)” (“‘UNIQUE’ is gonna have this moment, but people at the end of the day are gonna listen to ‘ICE’ — it’s going to be the one”). True to their vision: the most-listened songs from the record on Spotify are “UNIQUE” (15.5 million streams), “ICE (VVS)” (14.5 million) and “L.O.Y.L.” (6.9 million).
That track record carried into the choice of “BLOW UP” as P1H’s pick for a new single.
“We don’t get to call the shots in everything by any means, especially with our lead single,” Keeho says. “But I think it’s more like we can manipulate the system a little bit better now. It’d be more like, ‘Actually, I think this song’s a little better’ and we can really communicate our thoughts and ideas. But after that, it’s kind of up in the air.”
“We’ve never done [anything] this rhythmical,” Jongseob, the group’s youngest, adds. “I get more of a youthful [feeling]. This time is for a new chapter and challenging something new. That’s why we especially think ‘BLOW UP’ is better than the other options. We love ‘BLOW UP.’”
With TikTok-ready lip-sync lines sprinkled throughout the hyperpop track (“We vibin’, we feinin’, we mobbin’”), the song captures youthful ambition. Still, Intak, who has writing credits on every song on the EP alongside Jongseob, wanted the lyrics to show a harder, more mature edge.
“When we first heard ‘BLOW UP,’ a lot of the keywords the members picked out first were about youth,” the 23-year-old shares. “Rather than the bright side people see, I wanted to reveal more of the painful side hidden behind it. So, with the lyrics, I thought of it as walking a tightrope. Some people take a plane or a helicopter or an escalator to get somewhere higher. But I thought of us as walking a tightrope, climbing so cautiously it feels like we could fall, and wrote the flow of the song with that in mind.”
When it comes to P1Harmony’s aim to reach the top of the pop charts, the work they did within the group was just as necessary as the work they do for fans and audiences.
For Keeho, who grew up in Canada, it started with the culture shock of training in Korea. “The level of discipline that is taught in Korea was not something I was used to at all,” he says. “Doing like 10-hour, 11-hour workdays as a kid and even as a trainee, it’s like, ‘Whoa.’ You have to compromise your dignity almost a little bit — you have to kind of let them yell at you and be like, ‘I’m still gonna show you why I belong here.’ But I wasn’t raised like that.”
Soul, who moved from his native Japan to train in Korea, says he went in with his eyes and mind open. “When I decided to do this work, I already knew it would be really hard and came in prepared for it.” Today, the homesickness he felt is, he adds in English, “no more.”
Theo’s compromise is musical. “I love an indie band, guitar-type of music,” he admits, before sharing that he recognizes, “I’m a dancer and a performance singer now, so I have to make compromises on my music taste and what I may want to perform on stage. Obviously, a lot of [our] songs sometimes won’t be my cup of tea, but that’s totally normal and fine.” Curiously, the BLOW UP track he’d play on his own time? The heavy-hitting Afro-house cut “MOMENTUM.”
For Jiung, the work was in becoming comfortable separating himself from the stage. “When we started training, it was just a hobby,” he shares. “I loved singing, I loved just dancing; there were no goals — we were enjoying it like children. But when we [debuted], it became work and then a lot of things changed. So, I used to be on a roller coaster a lot, but now I think I know how to get rid of stresses from work.”
Part of that meant Jiung letting go of perfection typically placed — and expected — upon K-pop idols. “I was trying too hard to be a perfect singer,” the 25-year-old says. “Not only as a singer, but also as a human being. I really wanted people to think about me like a perfect person, but it’s impossible. So now I know how to accept it and how to express myself. I found the balance and it’s great.”
The push and pull of growing up fast while retaining your youthful joy comes through on BLOW UP as well via the album track, “t.o.t.y” (which stands for “too old too young”), prompting a final question: What is P1Harmony too old for now and what are they still too young for?
Like the feelings Intak described at the start, Jiung says he’s too old to keep working without thinking or “running without purpose,” but also too young to be overly calculated about everything (“I go back and forth between them,” he says). Meanwhile, Jongseob, who turns 21 this month, reconsiders how he handled his schooling. (“I feel I’m too young to live like this — I quit my school when I was 14 and that’s a little too young.”)
Keeho lands somewhere hopeful, with his mindset shaping the attitude the group carries into BLOW UP, in part thanks to seeing Charli xcx’s Music, Fashion, Film Tour at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum that week.
“This might sound offensive, but I went home and Googled her age,” Keeho, 25, explains of the brat superstar who released two critically acclaimed albums this year. “She’s 34 and I thought for some really dumb reason that I was getting so old that I kind of missed my mark. But I also watched a radio interview that Kelela did. She was talking about how we live in an industry where your first debut album has to go No. 1 when you’re 16, 17, 18 — that’s when you need to make your mark on the industry, and if you don’t do it, then you’re gone forever. But she’s been in the industry for so long. Same with Charli and all these veteran people who are now just really making their mark in the industry.”
He continues, “It’s never too late because everyone has their own timing. Sometimes in the six years there have definitely been moments, like, ‘Damn, did we kind of lose our momentum? Did we peak? Are we just stagnant now and do we have to be satisfied with where we are?’ But I think we’re way too young to even think about that.”
With seven years as the standard time for contract renegotiations in K-pop agencies, nobody is slowing down as P1Harmony hopes to tour, release more music, share more cover songs and “showcase more of our individual selves” in 2027. “It’s another time to really push even harder, make people sick of us almost,” Keeho adds.
That striving is key to BLOW UP.
“People might find it weird that we’re manifesting to ‘blow up’ six years down into our career,” Keeho says. “But I feel like it’s always a slow burn and a slow foundation that really causes something to pop. It creates longevity…we really wanted to talk about blowing up in a sense that it’s a self-manifestation for us. That even if it isn’t with this song, that one day we will blow up and become bigger than what we already are.”
